Carl Jung wrote that enlightenment doesn’t occur from sitting around visualizing images of light, but from integrating the darker aspects of the Self into the conscious personality. Darkness does not always relate to evil, just as light does not always  bring good.

For me, much of the past decade or so has been spent trying to integrate the person I wish to be with the person I am. I am reminded daily that I am not yet the person I want to be. I make mistakes, get angry, misjudge people. I am prone to being used, to living in delusion, to intolerance and frustration – especially with myself.

I frighten people, make them uncomfortable, speak too plainly sometimes. I am driven and impatient. I need to integrate the person I am with the person I wish to be. As I grow older, I am coming to understand that this is a journey without end, I will never quite get there, the value comes from trying, working, staying on the path, not accepting the person I am or giving up on being the person I wish to be.

To do this, I have to know who I am. When I make a mistake, I know now that I must not be defensive about it, deny it, or wallow in it. I must learn from it, use it to see myself clearly. The point is not to be perfect, it is to comprehend the dark side as well as the light, and be aware of both.

I am not expecting to be a saint, I don’t think the spiritual path ever leads to perfection, that is the turf of the Gods, not the humans. I am learning to accept my flaws and problems as well as my strengths, I am learning to see both of them clearly and honestly. When I make a mistake now, as I often do, I immediately set out to understand why and how I can learn from it and grow.

Oddly enough, I think of George Washington, someone I rarely think of. But I’m reading a good book about him and one of his dominant characteristics was to understand his mistakes and grow from them. That is who I want to be, not a perfect man, but a man who can see his mistakes, acknowledge them, and grow. I began doing that a few years ago, and it has benefited me greatly. The more I know myself, the more thoughtfully I can integrate the darker aspects of me into my conscious personality, the happier I am, the more I can accomplish, the less tormented and frightened I have felt myself to be.

There is no point in beating myself up, I am no better than you, you are no better than me. We share the experience of being human beings, which is to say we are flawed.

This is the hard work of the self, of self-awareness. I know so many people who talk about change, I know so few people who change. I have changed, I am changing. When I realized someone who claimed to be a close friend was using me – alas, this happens even to minor celebrities – I understood this was my flaw, not hers. No one can use you if you don’t wish to be used, it takes two to do that.

I learned a lot about myself after that painful episode. Co-dependence does not disappear because you learn about it, it lurks in the genes and the subconscious.

It won’t happen again.

I learned what I could, faced the truth about myself, and moved on. I never thought to compare myself to George Washington before, but he was a shining example of the notion of changing and growing. He was a lousy general at first, but learned from his mistakes and became a great general. He was a bumbling politician at first, but learned how to be politic and grew into a statesman.  He was shallow and ill-informed, but came to embrace  great vision.

Reading his own words about his life, I realized that his enlightenment came from integrating the darker aspects of he Self into his conscious personality.

I’m not sure we have anything in common apart from that, but it is an interesting idea for me. Self-awareness is hard work, and continuous work. It is easy to talk about change, it is hard to do it. It is simple to look at the bright side of ourselves, harder to see the darkness. But I am working to embrace both and see both clearly, I think the human experience consists of both. Enlightenment comes from authenticity.

I am freed of the burden of needing to be perfect, but I am free to seek true enlightenment every day of my life. Every day, I find a piece of it.